With Knight Foundation support, we have a crucial opportunity to demonstrate that inclusive community engagement online works at scale across an entire central city. We seek to demonstrate that all neighborhoods, regardless of income and the diverse communities within them, can and must be part of an integrated neighbors online revolution.

While Facebook is awesome at connecting friends and family, a PewInternet.org studyfound that the typical Internet user has only five neighbors as “friends”. They do have a healthier average of 16 “friends” from voluntary groups, of which I assume many are local. However, despite the perceived potential of Facebook, expecting it to magically connect people as “neighbors” through its typical use is misplaced. Local “public life” and how you interact with those you do not know or have not yet met in your community is fundamentally different than how you use private life connections.

In our experience, Facebook must be leveraged for sharing and more on our system. But simply put, a typical Facebook user posting a community-related question instead on my local neighbors forum would reach over 175 times the number of neighbors in one swoop. That is powerful and can generate far more useful, geographically-relevant information.

However, despite the fact that our neighbor connecting field is reaching millions of Americans there is more to the story. There is a long way to go to serve most people.

Our experience and a closer look at the numbers presents a real divide that must be tackled now. For example, when it comes to the online neighbor “joiners,” 19% of Internet users in households who make over $75,000 a year participate. Meanwhile, lower income Internet users in the $30-50,000 range participate at 7%, and under $30,000 a year only come it at 4.4%. We need to act now, before we look back in a generation and see that only certain areas and certain people actually benefited from our digital community engagement movement.

Finally, with our “online townhall” foundation dating back to 1994 when we created the world’s first election information website, we feel that public engagement (meaning open to all, even Google search) is crucial for maximum power and community agenda-setting. We care about people having a voice that has a real impact on local government and the local media. We specifically seek to build online spaces that encourage local public officials to engage with their voters or those they serve in a very public and accountable way.

Disturbingly, PewInternet.org’s Government Online study found that while 25% of white Internet users are are considered to be “online government participators” only 14% of Latinos and African-Americans are as well. Between elections, the world is run by those who show up. Having one segment show up at nearly twice the level isn’t good for democracy or our communities.

When you combine these divisions, it seems clear without action most lower income, highly diverse neighborhoods and the people who live in them will not have the same powerful opportunity to build community, gain their voice and enjoy the simple neighborly fun so many people are enjoying today.

[…] let you all know that you are part of a bit history and the pizza exchange story is going global: http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1372 Long story short – from this and a few other neighbors forums that are on fire with community […]